Timeless Faith

Living the ancient faith of Christ in today's world.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

The Forgotten Santa Claus

I have an update on my blog about my conversation with my daughter. A day or two before Christmas she came up to me and told me that she wanted a particular item for Christmas. I replied that she needed to ask Santa Claus.

Scrunching her face in frustration, she told me, "Daddy! You know there's no such thing as Santa Claus!" Softening a little bit, she added, "Besides, I don't know where to send the letter."

Christmas Eve we went to church and then over to some friends of ours for some Christmas Eve fellowship. By the time we got home, it was time to put the kids to bed and I and my daughter both forgot about milk and cookies. I thought about it the next afternoon and mentioned it to Hope. With an exclamation of "Aww, Man!" she expressed her disappointment. Then she shrugged, grabbed a new toy, and quickly forgot about it again.

Maybe we'll find out next year if Santa eats the cookies and drinks the milk.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

The author of the post in the link asked me to comment on it. My comment exceeded 3000 words and was subsequently rejected be the server. Therefore, I will post my comment here. There are some points I make in it that I was hoping to address here anyway. Here is the substance of my post:

It's true that ID is yet a minority view, but it's catching on slowly among serious scientists. One reason it's slow is because the scientific establishment currently has a predisposition toward naturalism and many papers either don't get written or published for fear of losing or not being able to get research grants. As it is, much of the biological research is in medicine because that's where the money is. I know this because I work in an industry that furnishes laboratories and I know who my customers are. (As an aside, Tee Bee, my education is in physics, not biology. I appreciate your consideration and will add that I have some interdisciplinary studies as a result of my research into the Evolution, Creation and now ID debate. I didn't want a response from me to go without correcting this.)

What bothers me is this notion that evolution is "proven". First, naturalism distorts the scientific method. A hypothesis is a simple deductive syllogism that defines a testable relationship between two things. A scientific experiment inductively measures the likelihood that this relationship is true. If a reasonable likelihood is not observed, the relationship is disproven. However, an experiment can only give a likelihood, it cannot give an absolute certainty - or proof. Naturalism distorts the scientific method by dismissing some relationships a priori. Ideologues outside the scientific community also distort the scientific method by making arguments that ignore the classical scientific method. The result has crept into science classrooms and the scientific method has not been properly taught. Today we have labs of scientists who do not strictly follow the method. While the vocabulary has beefed up, the process has dumbed down. Scientific papers are being reviewed by peers whose lack of understanding of the scientific method is on par with the authors of the papers.

Second, neither macro-evolution nor creation is testable. ID is the only theory on the table directly testable. You may read arguments about making predictions and observing those predictions. What this amounts to is first observing the evidence and afterward making up a story about how it got there. If I observe that plants and animals all have DNA, then it is reasonable to suppose that the different DNA had a single origin. The naturalist holds atheism as a presupposition and concludes that the first basic life happened by accident and all the rest evolved from it. The creationist holds theism as a presupposition and concludes that God did it. The theistic evolutionist believes the fallacy of appeal to authority and thinks that evolution has been proven because naturalistic scientists have asserted it, but claims that God must have started it. The ID-ist tests the likelihood of each and arrives at the conclusion that the most likely source of DNA is intelligent. It makes no claims as to what this intelligence is. For example, the intelligence could be extra-terrestrial life which evolved some other way.

Third, there is much contention against evolution from the evolutionists themselves. This is commendable, but it raises an interesting observation. If evolution is "proven", on what basis is it "proven"? The theory of evolution is not the same theory as Darwin devised. This is because the hypotheses developed from observations of the evidence that have supported the theory of evolution have been disproven and others have arisen to take their place. Evolution, therefore, is not proven. It is in a state of flux. The fact that scientists keep changing it's foundation and keep holding onto it as a fact is a demonstration that evolution is a product of naturalistic presupposition (in other words, a philosophy) and not the conclusion of any scientific research.

Taking this observation in stride, I will note that no scientific discovery has ever shaken the foundation of the creationist's presupposition. Logically speaking, this is not proof that creation is true. (There is another set of testable propositions for this which are more philosophical in nature.) It is, nevertheless, intriguing.

One other note: ID has a presupposition of its own. It holds that the most reasonable conclusion is the most likely one. It is alarming that serious scientists, educators, and now judges, dispute this. Ask any good physician what the first rule (or maybe the second rule) of diagnosis is and he will probably say something like, “the most likely diagnosis should be tested first”. The reason is because it's the most reasonable. You can sue for malpractice otherwise.

As for the nature of the original post here, the trial was wrong. The federal government has no business telling local schools what they can and cannot teach. It's up to the local community to either delude or properly instruct their public school students. I would hope that educators earnestly teach students to think critically. I know that this is often not the case. Education is the tool of the ideological propagandist and there is no education that is free from ideology. It behooves us to discuss what ideology is at stake here.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The New Santa Claus

My 6-year-old daughter, Hope, knows that Santa Claus isn't real. Her best friend, Jessica, who just turned 7, recounted to her that she set out cookies and milk for Santa last year and when she woke up, the cookies had been eaten and the milk had been drank. Her conclusion is that Santa must be real. My daughter, now desiring to set out milk and cookies to see if they get eaten, is hoping to have been misled by her parents and for Santa to be real. A humorous Q&A session on the way home from church the other night didn't result in an admonition that she knew the truth about Santa. Such was not what I was after anyway. Instead, she contrived a new and completely baseless structure of Santa facts - never before purported in any of the annals of Santadom. She does have quite the imaginagination, however. Excerpts went something like this:

Me: Can Santa really eat all those cookies and drink all that milk?

Hope: Sure. That's why he's so fat. But Santa doesn't really go down the chimney, because he can't fit. His elves go down and Santa throws the presents down to them.

Me: Santa takes elves with him? I thought he left them all at the North Pole.

Hope: He doesn't even drive the sleigh. They drive it for him.

Me: How does Santa go around the whole world in a night stopping at everyone's house?

Hope: Well, he actually only goes to the houses in America. He has elves go to the rest of the world. And they're very fast elves, too. They go a hundred miles an hour.

Me: What about houses that don't have chimneys?

Hope: The elves just go in through the front door.

Me: I thought you said that Santa throws the presents down to them.

Hope: Yeah. The elves lean out the window to catch them.

Me: You know you get presents from Mommy and Daddy, Maw maw and Paw paw, and everyone. How do you know what toys Santa give you?

Hope: He leaves a note on the present.

Me: I've never seen it.

Hope: It's invisible.

Me: How do you know it's there if it's invisible?

Hope: Only kids can see it.

Me: I was a kid once. Why didn't I see it then?

Hope: Santa has only been delivering presents for a few years. He wasn't around when you were a kid.

Me: I heard about Santa when I was a kid, but I still didn't see any notes.

Hope: Oh, that was somebody different.

Me: How do you know so much about Santa?

Hope: I have a book that tells all about him.

Me: I didn't know you have a book. Can I see it?

Hope: No. I sold it.

Me: Who did you sell it to?

Hope: A boy at a yard sale...for fifty dollars.

Me: I didn't think you'd ever been to a yard sale. What yard sale was this?

Hope: It was at Jessica's. I gave it to her and she sold it.

Me: Did you get the fifty dollars?

Hope: No, it was Jessica's book. She just let me borrow it. So, do I get to set out cookies and milk?

I just wonder if I'm going to have to eat the cookies and milk......maybe if they're chocolate chip...

Friday, December 16, 2005

Question Authority

Relativists use this admonition to encourage people to deny (question) absolute truth (authority). When relativists become scientists, the scientific method gets turned on its proverbial head and becomes a practice in subjective argument instead of objective testing. Relativists are, by nature, naturalists. To say that there is anything that transcends the natural world is to say that there is something absolute - or at least more absolute than one's own opinion. After all, the reason for being a relativist is to delude oneself into thinking that one is morally autonomous in order to justify doing what is generally understood to be wrong.

Such people with this warped philosophical mindset who study and achieve positions of authority in the scientific community do so without a proper understanding of the scientific method. The scientific method, built on transcending principles of objective logic is anathema to the relativist scientist. Therefore, he must develop a scientific method philosophy that excludes possibilities he doesn't want to consider. Sometimes (and more often than we realize) relativist scientists falsify aspects of their research.

While this is merely anecdotal it happens not infrequently. For example, one piece of evidence missing from evolutionary theory, and the geological strata, is commonly known as the “missing link”. Bones of post-ape, pre-human beings simply have not been found. Nearly all of the big finds that purport to be indicative of the missing link have either been proven outright hoaxes or extreme extrapolations on a miniscule piece of evidence. This is why Kathy Martin of the Kansas State Board of Education says that she “wants more information about materials that deal with critical analysis of evolution,” and that the state should “provide leadership for teachers looking to teach the controversial issue objectively."

When the relativists say “question authority”, they mean to deny absolute truth. When those who hold to transcendent truth say, “question authority”, they mean to encourage people to question their deeply held beliefs for the purpose of ridding oneself of false beliefs and strengthening true ones. This creates a framework of understanding against which information can be tested and absorbed and a person can develop in wisdom. A good scientist will focus on the scientific process and accept the results he gets within a reasonable margin of error. The Christian faith is not a blind faith; it is a faith of sight and reason. Our God is the God of reason and we should not fear the results of disciplined and ethical scientific endeavor, even if it means that we must discard a belief that we find to be wrong.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

The Pentagon has been covertly investigating anti-war meetings in the US. The thought is that the Pentagon is just demonstrating it's paranoia. Consider that we are being infiltrated by terrorists coming across our southern border. This activity is not uncommon in the US during the time of war. The reason the Pentagon does this is because they recognize that our enemies in war want to destroy us and will come onto our soil for either direct attacks on our people or for espionage. It behooves the Pentagon to check out people who may reasonbly be suspected to hinder our war efforts and risk the lives of our military personnel. This may include foreign infiltrators as well as US citizens who are working for the enemy.

Knowing this, is the anti-war crowd itself not paranoid as well? Is it okay to be paranoid if you have no power to do anything about it? Or is it really paranoia if it's true? The fact of the matter is, if you are doing anything that would make the Pentagon think you could subvert their efforts or harbor those who would subvert their efforts, then you should expect to be investigated. After all, we're at war whether you like it or not.

My kids know the truth. Some of my adult friends as well as my own parents have expressed slight dismay at my choice. However, my kids and I have fun with the Santa Claus mythos while recognizing that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the celebration of the incarnation of Christ. I make it a point to teach them the truth so they will grow up being able to discern the truth. Anybody who thinks about it realizes the impossibility of Santa Claus. For a humorous take on this, visit Jeff Spry's blog.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Death = Life?

There's been a debate over the death penalty lately. I posted earlier on it. I have thought about it and here present an addendum to my comments. One argument I hear against pro-lifers who believe in the death penalty is that the two positions are not compatible. It's tempting to retort that pro-abortionists who are against the death penalty are similarly inconsistent. It is true that being pro-abortion is inconsistent with being against the death penalty on all counts. However, I have concluded that being pro-life is not inconsistent with being for the death penalty.

Being pro-life means that one cannot tolerate murder. Recognizing that everyone dies, being pro-life is not being against death. Instead, being pro-life is being against unjust death. Abortion for the sake of convenience is unjust. Putting to death a murderer is just. When one dies due to health problems, this is at least reasonable. For Christians it is just because we are all sinners: we have the hope of a just God who is also gracious. One who is murdered dies an unjust death and it is made just by applying justice to the murderer. Therefore, the pro-life position is better understood as being pro-justice, and the justice is not that which is contrived by human minds, but a principle that transcends us.

There is the matter of a just war, but I'll not address that here. There are also those who may be pro-life and against the death penalty. This sophomoric position is typically propagated by the mistaken notion that this life is all there is. One who would hold the opposite view of being pro-abortion and for the death penalty is warped beyond general analysis except to say that such a one is compartmentalized in their thinking and has the irrational ability to hold opposing arguments to be true.

From this standpoint the most consistent understanding of those who are pro-abortion and against the death penalty is that they are against justice. They may argue that they are in favor of the right of people to choose how to they want to live or die. In order to apply this to abortion, is must be argued that the mother has all rights and the unborn has none. To apply this to the murderer on death row, the murderer must, in some way, be exonerated. What of the rights of those who were murdered? It may be argued that they are dead now and putting to death the murderer won't bring them back. This is true, but it begs the question that the point of the death penalty is to exact a balanced payment and that the only balanced payment is to give the murdered their lives back. This is not justice. Justice is a payment of sorts, but the balance is not the restoration of a previous order, it is a balance of the life lived by the murderer.

This is important for understanding the atonement of Christ. Christ died a just death, but it was not fair. His death was not for the balance of his life, but the balance of ours. Furthermore, the balance of our life was not our physical life, for we all yet die. No, but the balance of our life atoned for is our spiritual life. We have the hope of the resurrection precisely because the continuity of our spiritual substance is not dependent on our physical existence as the existentialists would have us believe. Rather, our physical existence is dependent on the substance of our spiritual continuity. We make all effort to bring the condemned to repentance, and put his body to death as justice demands. Having paid the price for his physical life, he may yet receive the grace of God in the atonement of Christ.

I had posted on hypocrisy earlier, and this round is oddly reminiscent of the mentally handicapped Bush jab. I'd like to point out that there are devout Christians in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party itself is subversively anti-Christian although it was not always so. The Democratic Party merely has the appearance of tending to people's needs. Their policy preferences do not produce the promised results and we can see that their heart does not consist of the previous moralism that created the impetus for the promises they use to maintain faithfulness to the party: promises such as racial equity, security in the necessities of living and educational opportunities. Those who believe the Democratic Party is earnestly seeking the fulfillments of these and other similar promises are sorely mistaken. In face, socialists have a term for these deluded hopefuls: "useful idiots".

I'm not saying that the Republican Party is pure as the wind-driven snow. However, it's a far cry better than the Democratic Party at the moment. My point up to now is that we should be aware of the intentions of our political bedfellows. We should seek policies that actually produce the results we desire. This means that we can't simply listen to the rhetoric of either party on any given policy, but review the history of such actions and go with the policies that we deduce will actually produce the results we desire.

As for hypocrisy, I'll reiterate my comment to the blog that outed the Washington Democrats hatred:

Christians are hypocrites. That's precisely why we need Christ's atoning work onthe cross. The thing is, those who despise Christians are also hypocrites. Iknow this because sin itself is hypocrisy in that the sinner in sinning elevateshimself falsely to godhood by claiming a right to devise his own morality. Inorder to be a Christian, one must admit his own sinfulness (hypocrisy). In thecase of Washington Democrats, they appear to deny their own hypocrisy preciselyby pejoratively pointing out the hypocrisy of Christians.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

The special interest groups have lobbied and made hatred illegal. Not only is the act of committing a crime punishable, but that punishment can be increased if the motive for the crime is perceived to involve some animosity the perpetrator has toward the victim. Someone can stand on a corner and hate someone else, but as long as they don't say or do anything about it they won't be prosecuted. They may be prosecuted for a hate crime if hatred was not truly a motivating factor if their victim belongs to a group of people who are perceived to always be on the receiving end of the hatred. In any case, hatred itself is deemed wrong, and we have a law against it. Who says we don't legislate morality? The law was passed because of the vitriol that the special interest groups have against those they perceive hate them. So hatred against those who hate urged a law to be passed against hatred. Clear as mud?

The law has been on the books for a while now. This year we are seeing increased hatred against those who were originally seen as the haters: white Christian men. Specifically, we have seen an anti-Christmas bias growing. With this sentiment, one Christian pastor has had his nativity display vandalized. The local authorities have made the observation that this may be considered a "hate crime". However, the pastor just wants to forgive those who have done the vandalization. This is a far cry different from those who pushed for the hate crimes legislation to begin with. It should serve to mark the difference between those who are falsely portrayed as haters and those who truly hate, no matter what group of people with whom they have been perceived to belong.

Thanksgiving brought mouring to a family whose teenage son was killed by his own wreckless driving as he passed another vehicle on a double yellow line at a blind curve on a local highway. Just yesterday I tooted my horn in warning as a vehicle passed myself and another driver on a double yellow line on a country road near my house. I was run off the road a couple months ago on the same road by a driver pulling the same stunt. The admonition is "don't drink and drive," not "don't think and drive."

I would argue that people die unjustly here in the US at a greater rate than soldiers dying for a just cause in Iraq. In the US, justice may yet be served by putting murderers to death. This has the effect of answering an unjust death with a just death. For those who would deny this, an understanding of justice is in order.

Justice is an end in and of itself. It is not the means to some other ends. This means that punishment is not supposed to solve emotional problems of victims or pursuade would-be perpetrators not to do it. Sometimes it has these effects. Sometimes it has opposite effects. Transgressions have a price. For cold-blooded murderers, the price is death-physical death. For God's law, the price is spiritual death, or separation from God.

But when many people use the term "justice" they call to mind poor people who don't have as much as other people. They wish for the people who have more to suffer for the benefit of the people who have less. This, in their minds, is "justice". Use of the word "justice" in this manner is disturbing. The reason this use has been normalized is to give people who belive they have less hope that someone in a position of power will cause the suffering of someone else who has more and redistribute their wealth for the benefit of society. Justice seems to have this meaning in Psalm 83:3,4. However, the meaning of equity carried by the most common word translated "justice" in the Hebrew Scriptures is more akin to "equity" or "balance". It is used in Job 31:6 to describe a balance scale that is accurate and used honestly. It is not translated "justice" but the literal translation is "the balance scale of justice." The meaning of equity in justice is not financial equity. It is the appropriate punishment for a wrongdoing. When applied to exacting punishment on people who have done wrong to people who cannot defend themselves, you get the real concept behind Psalm 83:3,4.

God's justice demands a price to be paid for our sin. God's grace provides a substitute to pay the price for our sin. God didn't wipe the slate clean without exacting the price. Our notion of justice must have the same equity. For a crime committed, a punishment must be meted out. A cold-blooded murderer who has repented must still face the penalty for having committed the murder. Can we accept a substitute like God? Only if that substitute is guiltless. In other words, no. Only God can deliver that sort of substitute. If, on the way to the proverbial gallows the one sentenced to death accepts God's sacrificial substitute, then such will be saved from eternal separation from God. However, he is not exempted from the just consequences of his actions. So his body may die, but he will live. Indeed, we all die.

What justice is there in war? It is impossible to determine the actions of individuals invloved in battle, but there is a concept of corporate justice and nations can be thought of as individuals for the sake of international justice.

In any case, we have an imperative to be just in this world. If we fail, the promise is that justice will happen in the next.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

It is true that the Bible contains accounts more violent than the Koran. God even caused some of the massive destruction Himself. God called on people to perform mass genocide. The difference between the Bible and the Koran is telling as to why.

The Bible is a historical account rather than simply a set of suggestions. The law, prophets, wisdom literature and epistles are set in a rich historical context that spans thousands of years. This historical context is verifiable as much of it can be dug up by archaeologists. The Koran, on the other hand, is merely set of suggestions spoken by one man in a single historical context. The Bible is more violent because it doesn't mince words much when describing the gore of actual events.

But the Bible differs from the Koran in another way. The Bible explicitly tells why these events happened and why God dealt harshly with some. The human race is wrought with sin, starting with a simple bite of fruit. The Koran doesn't get so explicit other than to either agree or disagree with the Bible on some of the details. The Bible also provides a solution to the cause of the violence: payment of the penalty of sin, not by the perpetrators (us), but through an atoning sacrifice (Christ).

This leads to my final difference between the Bible and the Koran. The Koran condones violence in the spreading of Allah's law. The Bible, while giving historical accounts where it has been done, does not advocate it in this age of revealed grace. Although misguided Church leaders (I'll refrain from calling them legitimate Christians) fought wars and tortured people to death under the auspices of the Church, true Christians are not aggressively violent as a rule. Some Christians serve in the military, but are typically only violent in the defensive. Most Muslims are not aggressively violent although there is a tendency to become easily incited when in a crowd. However, there are some who claim divine right to be aggressively violent in the name of Allah. My point is, there is no demonstrable correlation between the overall level of violence between the Bible and Koran and their respective followers.

Currently, the acceleration due to gravity near the earth's surface is 9.81 meters per second per second. If the earth's surface were 30,000 feet closer to the center of the earth, the acceleration due to gravity would be reduced by almost 1% to 9.71 or 9.72 meters per second per second. This is important when you consider that the orbit of the moon would have to be significantly different. By significantly, I mean that if it weren't different, it wouldn't stay in orbit. That means that if the earth was that much smaller, then the moon would not have been in orbit. If it were, the orbit of the earth about the sun would have been different. If the orbit of the earth about the sun would have been different even by a slight amount, then the earth could not be millions of years old.

Incidentally, the effect of all these factors is part of the reason I believe the earth to be much younger than commonly believed. How do we explain the time it takes light to reach us from distant galaxies? I suggest that much of the universe may be older than the earth because of extreme time dilation early in the genesis of the universe. Special relativity reveals that while time in this universe may be linear, it's rate of progression is relative to the

I've studied physics to a much greater extent than I've studied geology. I don't know all the theories geologists have as to where the layers of geological strata come from. Are they part of some natural churning of the earth's crust? If so, then depth doesn't matter as far as age and I suspect that strata would be radically different in different locations around the world. If this is the case, then I suspect this churning must be something more than the volcanic activity we have observed throughout human history. In this case, could such churning happen again to create very deep oil deposits?

If the strata, on the other hand, were deposited gradually over a long period of time from space dust, then we would expect to see occasionally unique layers that are relatively consistent throughout the world except from volcanic activity, tectonic warping, floods, astrological collisions and biological excavation and transformation. If this were to happen, then the changing mass of the earth would affect not only earth, but would increase the overall mass of the entire solar system which would have thrown us severely out of orbital regularity. Another obstacle to this is that if the strata were deposited by space dust, then the earth was likely nearly completely covered with water at one point unless the ocean floor has a similar thickness of space dust as on land. Even then, the fact that the earth would have had less surface area, there would be less holding area for water - unless water has been pouring from outer space as well.

If the strata is relatively uniform in the space dust model, but you realize the problems with the model, then the only solution is that the strata today was caused by a global churning-type event, whatever that may have been.

Here's my point - we have less a clue of what our planet is than we realize. The oil being found 30,000 feet underground didnot get deposited when the earth had a diameter 60,000 feet less than it has today. Either the oil is not a biological byproduct, or something else is happening. Not knowing much about geology, I don't know if this is possible, but it is something to ask. Before the widespread burning of oil, there were more forest fires and men burned more wood. Volcanic activity has spewed more carbon into the atmosphere than we have pumped from the ground. The oceans contain the biological resources for filtering the carbon from the air and at times are quite efficient at it. If carbon continues to go into the oceans, where does that carbon go? Sure, we fish some of the carbon out as seafood, but not enough to account for the carbon absorbed. Perhaps this carbon finds its way into the vast crevasses in the ocean floor and turns into oil deposits. It's just a theory and I may be way off base. The oil has to be coming from somewhere.